


Confrontation

by neitherbluenorgreen



Series: Confrontation [1]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: After 2x13, Angst, Beth is afraid, Beths POV, But both are really damaged, Confrontation, Hurt, Rio is not happy, there are feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 17:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20362273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neitherbluenorgreen/pseuds/neitherbluenorgreen
Summary: Part of Brio is that they will always clash. And neither is sure to have the upper hand.





	1. The Lift - Beth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 months after she shot Rio, Beth is on her way to see Turner. Rio confronts her. Beth's POV

Beth is glad to see the lift is empty. She’s managed to keep an outward impression of calmness, but inside she’s jittery with nerves. She had been certain she was rid of Turner and now he’s back.  
He had sounded smug on her answering machine, “inviting” her for “a little chat”. 

She presses the button for the 15th floor and turns to look at herself in the mirror-walls of the lift. She tries smiling, but it’s a grimace and she just hopes she can pretend enough to get Turner off her back. She hears steps hurrying towards the lift and her hand reaches for the button to open the doors. Turning her head nearly looks as if her reflection is shaking her head and she straightens up. No more nice and sweet and polite Beth. No more bending herself like a pretzel to cause no offense. Too bad there’s no button for ‘closing the doors faster’.  
Turning back to her reflection, she checks her lipstick. It’s on spot, but her eyes are too weary. Whoever was trying to catch the lift succeeds. Beth can see a hand out of the corner of her eyes, catching the door. Slowly it begins to open again. Why are those damn doors so slow?  
She steps closer to the mirror, brushing at her mascara. Somebody enters the lift and presses a button. Beth’s body blocks most the reflection of the newcomer, but she doesn’t care anyhow. The doors slide close again. She fluffs her hair. With a slight lurch the lift begins to accent. 

“Elizabeth.”  
She knows that voice. It can’t be. She hears it every night in her nightmares. It’s not possible.  
He’s dead.  
She killed him.  
Beth squeezes her eyes shut. It was a hallucination. It must be. Turning she pastes a polite smile on her face. Opens her eyes.  
It’s him. He’s alive. 

Rio.

The lift is still ascending, she can’t flee. Her eyes flicker over him. He’s pale, eyes sunken, face expressionless. Waiting for her to react.  
She swallows a sob. Thousands of questions race through her mind. She feels queasy from the uncountable feelings fighting inside her.  
Relief he’s alive. Fear for her life. Anger at him, at herself, at Turner. Wonder that he’s here, that he didn’t kill her yet. Confusion at how they managed to trick her. Suspicion, of course. She can’t, won’t name the rest.  
She thought, she had finally control over her life, but now everything is shattering again.  
He shifts, leaning against the wall, not taking his eyes off of her, still silent. Is he getting impatient?  
7th floor. Still going up. What happens when they arrive and Turner’s there? Of course, he’s there. They planned this.  
“So, you sold me out?” she asks with a nearly steady voice. It’s the least inane question she can think of, but it’s still so useless. Obviously, he sold her out.  
Instead of answering, he reaches out. Beth nearly jumps back, but there’s no room. A smirk almost tugs at his lips, but he just reached for the control panel. The lift stops. A quick glance at the display tells her it’s somewhere between the 8th and 9th floor. 

Rio leans back against the wall. His face is an empty mask, giving her no clue what to expect. Still he doesn’t say anything.  
Beth composes herself. Brushes her hair from her face. Straightens her purse, runs her hands over her skirt. His eyes never leave her face.  
The strain is too much.  
“You made me do it. I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t shoot him, could I?” she begins. Her voice gets more frantic with each word. Still no reaction from him.  
“I thought you were dead.”  
Stating the obvious yields no more results.  
She sighs deeply, her despair making it a wet, almost sobbing sound.  
“Do you get immunity for ratting me out?” she asks. Nothing.  
“You obviously don’t need witness protection,” she continues, a huff that is close to a laugh escaping her. “I’m not that powerful.”  
She looks at her boots.  
“Not powerful at all.”  
He shifts again, licking his lips. A slight narrowing of his eyes speaks of pain, then the masks slips back on.  
“I dream of you every night,” Beth continuous. “I try not to shoot you, every night. And I always fail.”  
Her heart feels so heavy. Her eyes burn with unshed tears. In the 3 months since she shot him, she didn’t sleep much. She started hatching new plans to distract herself. Pretending his death was a relief, giving her freedom, giving her the possibility to set out on her own. 

“You done?” Rio rasps.  
Beth looks up, surprised. She almost didn’t think he would talk at all. Almost managed to belief he was a figment of her imagination, coming to haunt her like some gangbanger ghost of Christmas past.  
His ashen face betrays no emotion, but his voice is harsh.  
“I told you, you need to kill the king to become the king.”  
She nods.  
“You failed,” he says, his voice so low she almost can’t hear him.  
Her mind reels and a hysteric giggle bursts out of her. Still playing the gangster mentor? She quickly covers her mouth with both of her hands.  
But there’s no wrath. Not even anger. At this point she longs for something, so much that disappointment would be welcome. Anything except this nothingness.  
He pushes himself off the wall, this time masking his pain better. When did she learn to read him so well and why does she remember so much and why doesn’t he show any emotion now?  
He’s close to her now, but all she feels is distance. He stares at her, his eyes fixed at hers. They stood like this so often and it always had brought heat to her face, making her flush, sending shivers all through her body until she could feel her heartbeat at the apex of her legs.  
Now she almost shivers from the cold.  
“When I push that button again, we will soon arrive at Turner’s floor,” Rio says. “Of course, I talked to him. He will arrest you and I will go free. You will spend the next 10 to 15 years in an orange jumpsuit. A nasty color.”  
Something inside her bristles at his insinuation that the color of the prison garb would be her worst problem. At the same time, she knows that it was because he knows exactly that being apart from her children would be the true nightmare.  
Suddenly her legs give way. She sinks to the floor.  
“Marcus,” she whispers.  
He towers over her, his face hard, cold, pale. 

“I’m so sorry,” she starts to sob now. Her throat hurts and the tears burn across her cheeks. She barely notices Rio pushing the button, but right now she accepts her punishment. She almost took Marcus’ father from him. She had been so self-absorbed that it hadn’t even crossed her mind. All Rio had been was the gangbanger, the bad guy, the symbol of crime and distribution and chaos.  
There had been so much they had shared apart from crime and money. She had seen him with Marcus, had seen the photos, the little bits of his normal life. He had shown her a side that was private and hidden. And because she was greedy and panicked and needed somebody to blame, she had reduced him to the role of the evil crime lord.  
The tears seem to be endless. There’s only rawness and hurt and guilt and loss.  
With a dinging sound the lift’s door opens. She lets herself be dragged outside. After a while she notices that it’s darker than she had expected. Looking up, she expects to see Turner, but they are alone. She looks around and notices signs of renovations underway. Looking back to the lift she sees a bronze 14 above the door.  
Through a blurry curtain of tears, she looks up at Rio, not quite understanding what is happening.  
A fake smile is plastered on his face.  
“Since you’re so sorry, maybe we can work something out,” he says, his voice toneless, his eyes cold.  
Beth feels as if the floor has opened underneath her. A pair of strong hands grab her from behind and drag her towards a door.


	2. The Lift - Rio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 months after she shot Rio, Beth is on her way to see Turner. Rio confronts her. Rio's POV

Rio has been waiting in the foyer for a good while, his base cap hiding his features, his clothes nondescript, a fucking scarf hiding his neck. Turner said he’d “invite” Beth on Wednesday, thus he’s here on a Tuesday.  
After what seems like hours, she finally arrives. A nice blouse, a pencil skirt, made up nicely, but not too nice. He keeps himself from a scoffing laugh. After entering the foyer, she looks around to get her bearings. Spotting the lift, she hurries there, her kitten heels making her steps dainty, her hips sway. He clenches his jaw, pushing away memories.  
Quickly he follows her. 

With one hand he stops the lift’s doors from closing and enters. She’s distracted by her reflection, checking her make-up. He presses the button for the 14th floor. The doors slide close. She fluffs her hair. With a slight lurch the lift begins to accent. From his position he can just see a bit of her face. She looks tired beneath the make-up. Is that a hint of fear he spots in her eyes? And he hasn’t even fucking started.  
He licks his lips, schools his features to show no sign of emotion and addresses her: “Elizabeth.”  
Her body goes rigid and he can see that she closed her eyes. As if he was some monster under the bed that vanishes when you don’t see it.  
Slowly she turns around, the caricature of a smile on her lips. It fades as soon as she opens her eyes. Instead, there’s panic. It’s almost comical how the emotions change in a few seconds. She didn’t change at all, never being able to hide what she feels. Oh, she got better. But she can’t hide from him. 

He works hard to keep his face impassive. She looks fragile and he realizes that he missed her more than he thought. He’s had three months to think about her betrayal. His first impulse had been to destroy her, completely and promptly. Then he had fantasized about dismantling her, slowly, using all that he knew about her and her precious feelings to utterly break her.  
This moment had played out so often in his mind. When she realized that he was alive. He sees the terror in her eyes, but it doesn’t satisfy him as much as he thought it would.  
He shifts, leaning against the wall, not taking his eyes off of her, still silent. He’s making her even more nervous and still she didn’t say anything.  
Her eyes flicker up to the display, showing that they are just passing the 7th floor. She doesn’t notice that the 14 is lit up on the panel on the side as well as the 15.  
“So, you sold me out?” she asks surprisingly calmly, but still with a tremor in her voice.  
Instead of answering, he reaches out. Beth nearly jumps back, but there’s no room. He has to keep from smiling at the shock on her face, but deep inside he finds that he’s sad, too. She didn’t use to flinch, when he invaded her space. Once upon a time. He hits the stop button. Beth checks the display again, still too anxious to pay attention to all her surroundings.  
After her inane question, he decides to let her stew a bit longer. Keeping silent can be a very effective interrogation method. He leans back against the wall and keeps watching her  
Beth goes through her usual routine to get ready. She brushes her hair from her face and straightens her purse. His eyes nearly follow her movement as she runs her hands over her skirt, but he can keep himself focused on her eyes, hard as it may be to not undress her with his eyes. 

Finally, she breaks and a stream of words flows out of her. It starts with “You made me do it. I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t shoot him, could I?”  
Just as he expected. He knows now that he was a fucking fool that night. Wounded pride and the need to have her completely had made him take Turner. In his mind, clouded with desire and wrath, he thought that she just needed a little push to join him, just a little nudge. He had underestimated her illusions about being a good person. She still clung – probably still clings – to the idea that she’s not that bad, that what she’s doing isn’t really a crime. Shooting somebody like Boomer was something she could have rationalized, because he was a bad man, but an FBI agent? No way. It had been his own fault that he failed to see the twisted logic that ruled her behavior. He knew that he was a criminal and that he did bad things. He had no problem aligning this with his own moral code, but she was still too caught up in the polite fiction of a just and civil society.  
“I thought you were dead.”  
He almost doesn’t hear her, lost in his own thoughts. He should have made her kill Dean. Maybe stage something, that useless pile of shit did so many dumb things that it would have been easy.  
Her sigh draws him back, the sound full of desperation. He keeps still, wondering what she will say next.  
“Do you get immunity for ratting me out?” A pause. “You obviously don’t need witness protection. I’m not that powerful.”  
He’s glad that she looks away. If only she’d realize her true power. She’d be incredible. A fucking Queen.  
She mumbles: “Not powerful at all.”  
He twitches, nearly moving to reach out, but the pain in his chest reminds him of why he’s here.  
“I dream of you every night,” Beth continuous. “I try not to shoot you, every night. And I always fail.”  
That’s it. Before she can begin to wallow in self-pity, he decides to get her back onto the right path. Even though there are two lifts, it’s been long enough for somebody to call a super or something, if this one doesn’t start moving again, soon.

His voice raspy from disuse he asks: “You done?”  
She looks at him and he adds harshly: “I told you, you need to kill the king to become the king.”  
She nods at this, her face almost pensive.  
“You failed,” he says.  
Something that sounds suspiciously like laughter erupts from her and she quickly covers her mouth. He has to act before she dissolves in hysterics.  
Moving deliberately hurts not as much as suppressing a sudden impulse and he manages to keep his face calm. Time to up the threat.  
“When I push that button again, we will soon arrive at Turner’s floor. Of course, I talked to him. He will arrest you and I will go free,” he begins and then drives it home:” You will spend the next 10 to 15 years in an orange jumpsuit. A nasty color.”  
With a strange yelp she lands on her butt. It’s almost comical, if not for the raw pain in her voice, echoing his own.  
“Marcus,” she whispers. Then the tears start. “I’m so sorry.” 

He closes his eyes. He wanted to hear this so badly, but now it seems as if it’s not even important anymore. He knew it from the moment he saw her, but now he is certain that he still has his grasp on her.  
This time, he won’t be such a fucking tool. This time, he would make her his and she would stay with him.  
They arrive at the 14th floor and the door opens. His guys are already waiting and he nods at them. She’s looking like a doll that’s being dragged across the floor and they leave her in a heap of misery. Finally, it registers that something isn’t right and she looks up. It takes a minute before she understands what is going on. Bevor she can say anything, he says: “Since you’re so sorry, maybe we can work something out.”  
The despair in her eyes almost wracks him, but she needs to learn her lesson. Only then everything can get better.


End file.
